Pandora's Box
by Liv Wilder
Summary: Spoiler Alert! This is a one-shot based on Sneak Peak 4 of 4x15 "Pandora", imagining how the conversation about Kate & Castle's relationship might have gone.  If I'd been in charge!


**This is a one-shot, based on Sneak Peak 4 for 4x15 "Pandora". So if you have more self-control than I do, and don't watch those things, then I suggest you look away now. **

**However, if you share my "little kid at Christmas" attitude towards sneak peaks and spoilers, then please, read on.**

**I wanted to explore how this conversation might have gone differently, picking up from the point where Beckett has the courage to open up to Castle that she is indeed bothered that he worked with a muse in past…that she isn't his '**_**first**_**', so to speak.**

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><p><strong>Scene:<strong> Driving back to the precinct in the Crown Vic, Kate at the wheel, as usual. She's just expressed her unease over the effect working with the CIA will have on team cohesion. Castle tries to settle her mind that they're all one big team and should be doing this in the interests of national security (a wet dream come true for him, I'm sure).

We then see Kate grimace, uncomfortable with the weight of what she really wants to say, and then she takes her courage in her hands and…

"_It's just I might have been a little taken aback to find out that you had…researched with someone else."_

Castle takes a breath, knows he has to make this answer count, that there's serious charming required here.

"_Look, it was never the way…it is with you and me."_

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><p><em>Now we move into imaginary territory…<em>

Kate's jealous of Sofia. She knows it, hell she thinks even _he_ knows it, and yes, she hates it. Hates feeling like…like such a _girl_. Like some lovesick, strung out teenager, who's just found out that her boyfriend slept with the head cheerleader, when she thought she was his first.

God, she's making herself sick, but this thing is burning in her gut and it's distracting her from this case, and impairing her judgment, and weakening her performance in front of said cheerleader. So she told him, she told him that she was shocked to find out that she wasn't his only muse. And now he's sitting beside her in the car trying to placate her, with some line about how Sofia meant less, and it wasn't _like it is with you and me_, and suddenly the jealousy is morphing into something new, something reckless.

They have a code, a code of silence, of sorts. Sure, they talk…_a lot_. Oh they spend hours talking and joking and theorizing and laughing and touching (barely)…and avoiding. They even use innuendo to avoid – how crazy is that – thinks Kate. Using a come on to hold someone at arms length. If she weren't already in therapy, she'd have to section herself.

So she decides to throw a little something at him, to see if he will pick up that ball and run with it. He's accused her of not talking about things – that kiss, nearly freezing to death in each other's arms, oh, and don't let him get started on the tiger. He told her once that he has '_no clue_ _what they are'_, and now he's just said that things with Sophia were '_never the way it is with you and me'_.

So this is her jumping off point. She wants him to tell her exactly the way it is with him and her. She wants them to face it, stop avoiding, and she's going to make him go first.

"And just how is it with you and me, _exactly_?" she asks, the question landing like a grenade in the footwell of the car, cutting off his rambling, charming, little avoidance speech.

Verbal skid marks hang in the air.

He looks across at her, and Kate stares him down. Her gaze is open and challenging. No looking away, no hiding behind those spectacular lashes, just an invitation to honesty and a step in the right direction, hopefully.

"You really want to do this now?" he asks, unsure if he's misreading her, and unwilling to open up if it's going to take them down a dead end, into some kind of relationship backwater, where the progress they've made will be becalmed and stall.

"As good a time as any," says Kate, her chin jutting out defiantly as she noses the car towards the curb, pulls over and cuts the engine.

Shit, thinks Castle. She's really doing this. And he's never felt so unprepared in his life.

"_So_…the way it is with you and me. How is it, Castle? Tell me," she instructs him.

Her tone is a little harsh, a protection to mask her fear, he hopes. There's no hint of teasing, fun, vulnerable Kate. The Kate she's been showing him more and more recently. Only brittle, insecure, tough-girl Kate. The one who could so easily brush off whatever he's about to say, like it means nothing…like _they_ mean nothing, if he doesn't get the words right.

"Well, I think we're…"

"What? You think we're what, Castle?" she says a little impatiently.

He's having performance anxiety. The verbal foreplay is over, she's just slammed him up against that metaphorical wall and his game has deserted him.

He sighs. "Kate…"

"Castle, don't _Kate_ me. If she meant nothing and you followed her around, then what the hell is this? Huh? You found a more lucrative seam of writing gold in Nikki Heat, so you're sticking around to milk it for as long as it pays? Is that it?"

She's getting angry now. He guesses she's embarrassed to be forcing the issue, to let him see just how much all of this is bothering her. He wants to throw her a lifeline so she can save herself. Heck, he wants to jump in and save her himself, but he's not sure she'll let him anywhere near her right now. Because the look she's giving him is…_pitiful_.

She's…shit. He thinks those might be tears.

"Look, it doesn't matter. Forget I said anything. _Ha!_ Who'd have ever thought we'd be working for the CIA, _right_?" she says a little maniacally, trying to cover up the parts she's just exposed with a brightness to her voice that's failing to translate to her face.

She's shutting down. The window of opportunity is closing, and so he throws himself at it, rolls on his side, manages to scrape under just before it slams shut.

"Kate, don't," he says, stilling her hand on the ignition, taking the keys away from her.

"Castle, what the hell? Give me back my keys," she says, trying to snatch them from his hand.

He captures her hand instead, palming the keys into his coat pocket, out of her reach. A dangerous, reckless move, but he's come this far. Might as well push on.

"You want to know what we are, Kate?" he asks, a little angry himself now, if he's honest.

She shuts up and allows him to hold onto her hand, the significance of this moment shaking her to her core. Then she nods, encouraging him to continue.

"We are a whole world of possibilities just waiting to happen. We are perfect as we are, but we have the potential to be so much more. We are broken and mended, bit and pieces, two parts of a whole. We are terrified of messing this up. We are going to be just fine. We are in this together. We are on the verge of something great. We are meant to be."

He pauses, squeezing her fingers. The anger drained away now. Her face is softer, her eyes kinder. She looks grateful.

"That's the way it is with you and me."

_FIN_


End file.
